More than just child's play: Enhancing the class experience through role‐playing in children's law

• Published date: 01 October 2022
• Author: Jessica K. Heldman,Robert C. Fellmeth
• Date: 01 October 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12670

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

More than just child's play: Enhancing the class

experience through role-playing in children's law

Jessica K. Heldman

1

| Robert C. Fellmeth

2

1

Child Rights, University of San Diego School

of Law, San Diego, California, USA

2

University of San Diego School of Law, San

Diego, California, USA

Correspondence

Jessica K. Heldman, Child Rights, University of

San Diego School of Law, San Diego, CA,

USA.

Email: jheldman@sandiego.edu

Abstract

Issues impacting children, families, and communities involve

an array of weighty interests rooted in a variety of conse-

quential historical, legal, and political precedents. For

more than 30 years, students in the course Child Rights

and Remedies have explored these precedents while hon-

ing their critical thinking and advocacy skills through role

play. Students are each assigned a role for the duration of

the semester—a child advocate/child's attorney, a parent

advocate/parent's attorney, a state attorney, among

others—from which to analyze cases relevant to children.

Students are asked to identify the strongest legal and pol-

icy arguments supporting the position of someone in

their assigned role and to prepare to raise and defend the

position in class. A recent innovation—developed as a

result of mandated virtual instruction—expands student

exploration of child- and family-related topics through

contribution to a current events blog. This article will

briefly discuss the benefit of role play in legal education

followed by detailed guidance on using the approach to

explore four key child rights cases. The article also

includes the blog assignment description as well as exam-

ple blog entries and responses.

KEYWORDS

child abuse and neglect, child advocacy role of counsel, child

custody disputes, children's rights, constitutional law, foster care,

DOI: 10.1111/fcre.12670

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which

permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no

modifications or adaptations are made.

© 2022 The Authors. Family Court Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Association of Family and Conciliation

Courts.

Family Court Rev. 2022;60:691–705. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fcre 691